Barry Smith is a prominent contributor to both theoretical and applied research in ontology, especially in the fields of biomedical and military informatics. He is the author of some 500 publications on ontology and related topics, and his research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the US, Swiss and Austrian National Science Foundations, the US Department of Defense, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the European Union. In 2002 he received the 2 million Euro Wolfgang Paul Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2010 he was awarded the first Paolo Bozzi Prize in Ontology by the University of Turin. Smith has BA and MA degrees from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Manchester, England. Since 1994 he has been a faculty member in the University at Buffalo, where he is currently Director of the National Center for Ontological Research, and Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics, Computer Science, Neurology and Philosophy.